Posts Tagged ‘conservatism’

The “5G” hype is getting feverish, which always should inspire caution and skepticism. One of the great “advantages” of 5G is supposed to be improved connection in the “Internet of Things,” itself another buzzphrase with dark corners. Do I want a “connected” refrigerator with a backdoor to China (or to NSA, for that matter)? From an article on CNET:

“5G ‘will lay the foundation for smartphones, later cars and virtually every electronic device that will be connected,’ Qualcomm president Cristiano Amon said during a keynote. ‘That first step (smartphones) is getting to us in the first half of 2019.'”

Maybe it’s because I’m an old, retired IT curmudgeon, but I really don’t WANT my “every electronic device” connecting to China and the NSA, without my knowledge and consent.

Forgive me if I’ve restated the obvious, or RE-restated the obvious that has already been stated recently, but I want to emphasize that

(1) No candidate is perfect; and

(2) A perfect candidate is not necessary.

Government is an aggregate effect, as is an economy. An economy is the aggregate effect of millions of millions of individual transactions (or refusals to transact). A government is the aggregate effect of millions of laws, regulations court decisions, bureaucratic actions or inactions, law enforcement actions and decisions, and abuse and neglect at all levels, including in the decisions, or the lack thereof, of individual citizens and non-citizens, voters and non-voters.

A perfect president is desirable, but not required. A perfect legislator is desirable, but not required. A perfect judge is desirable, but not required. If.

If we have a Congress whose majority understood and respected the Constitution, NO president could get away with what presidents have been getting away with for the last hundred years, or so.

If we have a lazy Congress whose goal seems to be making itself irrelevant to the operation of government, as Congresses have appeared to be for that same, hundred-year interval, an extremely disciplined, Constitutional president might temper or even thwart the negligence and corruption of a Congress.

Either a Constitutional Congress, or a Constitutional president, could thwart or reverse an overreaching federal judiciary.

That is the lasting beauty of our checks-and-balances system — if and when it is applied.

If the aggregate legislator, judge and chief executive are Constitutionalists, the evil or stupidity of a few individuals is cancelled out by the actions of the whole.

To get a Constitutional government, and keep it, requires a vocal, relentless and determinedly Constitutional electorate. The aggregate effect of a Constitutional electorate outweighs the efforts of the stupid and corrupt few — or, of the corrupt many, if the Constitutionalists are sufficiently relentless and vocal.

Again, forgive me for any redundancy, or for re-stating the obvious, but there it is. Perfection in government is unnecessary, if the aggregate effect is Constitutional, and if the aggregate voter keeps it that way.

Coyotes, the media and Progressive elites — pragmatic predators all — prefer THESE as prey…

… Over THESE, as prey, although both are edible. Do we know WHY?Yes, we do, even if the wizards in the media-government complex do not.

Just as a hungry coyote understands the important difference between a rabbit and a rattlesnake, a would-be armed robber, or a glory-seeking spree killer, understands the difference between a victim who may be armed, and one who certainly is not.

Both the rabbit and the rattler can be eaten, but preying on rattlers involves considerably more risk than preying on rabbits. Why? Fangs and venom, that’s why. A coyote or a human predator that chooses the wrong prey is more likely to end up floating, face-down, in the gene pool.

There has been supportive chatter in the media-government complex for decades, on the efforts of the UN and American “Progressives” to get small arms out of the hands of individuals, and make them a government monopoly.

The media tend to chide Americans who cherish their Second Amendment right, for being afraid the UN wants to take away “their deer rifles.” Silly Second Amendment types! All the UN is concerned about, the editorials say, is “rocket launchers and machine guns.”

Of course, that’s a lie. The UN, whose membership is composed mainly of tin-horn dictatorships and bankrupt, socialist dis-utopias, and the Progressives, who cherish their own safety enough to hire armed bodyguards, want to relieve all of us of all of our firearms, down to the last pellet gun and antique flintlock. It’s for our own good, right?

Hardly.

The UN’s problem is that an armed populace is a terrible inconvenience to a would-be despot. Armed citizens may not go along with certain kinds of government excesses, such as pogroms, purges, gulags, concentration camps and slavery.

Armed citizens introduce an element of risk and expense to such ventures that discourages governments from undertaking them. Beneath their veneer of compassion and care for our collective safety, the Progressives share the UN’s concerns.

Armed citizens are also a nuisance to the dictator next door, whose stupid policies have wasted all his country’s resources. He must now prey on his neighbors to satisfy his needs, and “reallocating their resources” may be difficult, if his neighbors are armed. Charitable by nature, perhaps, they may not share the great leader’s vision for their future. Their privately-owned weapons may frustrate their acquisitive neighbors’ plans long enough for regular military forces to show up and end them altogether.

On a much smaller scale, armed citizens are also a nuisance to the individual predator, who dislikes assuming the risk of attacking a crowd of rabbits, only to find that one or more of them has hidden rattlesnake fangs and venom, and the will and skill to use them in his defense, or in defense of innocents around him.

America’s founders understood this principle of nature (and of human nature), and built the individual right to be armed into our Constitution.

Coyotes, armed robbers and dictators understand this principle.

Someone, please explain it to the nation’s media-government complex, and to our Progressive elite.

I’m following the comments on the conservative blogs and social media since the Republican National Convention, and I see two, diverging threads of interest.

One is cautiously optimistic that Romney WILL actually be better for the future of the USA than four more years of Obamanation.

The other sees no differences between them, and sees the choice as binary — either Obama OR Romney — is a false choice. Somehow, they believe, voting for a third-party candidate, or sitting out the presidential race, or even sitting out the whole election, is the only honorable and/or Godly choice. Romney is simply too flawed to be worthy of their votes.

I can identify strongly with portions of both threads, but the appeal of the sitting-it-out option for me is purely emotional, and I’m over it. I was angry about the selection process that gave us Romney, but hardly surprised. The same backstage manipulators that gave us McCain were responsible for giving us Romney, and I’m angry about that, too.

Anger, however, is a dangerous motivation for any decision, but especially for deciding how, or whether, to vote, and especially dangerous this time around.

Alan Keyes, whom I admire and respect, seems firmly convinced that Romney is evil, and only trivially different from Obama. He thinks voting for Romney “just” to keep Obama from a second term is tantamount to selling his soul. Others, friends whose opinions I take seriously, believe that, as well, to one degree or another.

A subset of the above group think Romney is just this election’s John McCain, but I think John McCain was not only a RINO, but an abysmal candidate for President. He may have been able to convince enough Arizonans over the last hundred years to keep him in the Senate, but he was either utterly inept at running for the presidency, or actively defeating himself at every turn, because he couldn’t have done a worse job of running for president if he really didn’t want to be president.

Either way, Romney is far better as a candidate. At least that is my current assessment, based on his acceptance speech at the RNC and his actions in the first day after that.

Having vacillated in 2008 between Joseph Farah’s “None of the Above” position, and writing in Alan Keyes because I could not bring myself to vote for McCain, and because there was no way in Hell I was going to vote for Obama, I finally settled on writing-in Keyes. I don’t regret that vote, because McCain was, and is, as sleazy and success-driven a politician as Obama, but with more history to prove it.

Contrary to what some of my Republican friends say, I have no faith that McCain would have been a better president that Obama has been. Where Obama is ideologically driven to do whatever is worst for America, I believe John McCain would have done whatever his sycophants and manipulators could persuade him to do, and he was as much a chump for the global warming scams and other liberal pretexts for grabbing power, and for establishment Republican “inclusiveness” and “compassionate conservatism” scams as any RINO, and as most out-front Liberals.

While his motivations might have been portrayed as noble, his results would have differed only in degree from those of Obama. If McCain could rationalize any decision with his imaginary legacy, or his chances at re-election, or that coveted chairman-emeritus spot on some tax-money-laundering “non-profit” foundation, he would have done so, and the Constitution, “quote-Conservatives-unquote,” and his country could be damned.

Ron Paul is running, as always. But it doesn’t matter, because he is a reptile with not more than one view or belief in a hundred in common with me, so he might as well not be running. Ron Paul zealots did their best to steal the nomination, and failed spectacularly. It was a pratfall-on-a-banana-peel, slapstick failure – one that would embarrass into silence and self-imposed obscurity anyone capable of embarrassment.

I now know what another four years of Obama would bring, and I see voting for him, not voting, or voting for a write-in or third-party candidate as an absolute betrayal of my country.

With the huge effort at vote fraud Obama and his troops will undertake, and have already undertaken, including registering illegal aliens, registering dead and non-existent voters, busing union stooges from one polling place to another to vote multiple times, forging and mass-producing fraudulent absentee and early ballots, the living, legitimate voters may be outnumbered. (That isn’t hyperbole. In more than one precinct in 2008, actual votes cast outnumbered registered voters significantly. Vote fraud is a Democrat industry. Fraudulent votes are the one commodity they produce on a regular basis.)

I will be casting my one, legal vote for Romney.

Arithmetic is relentlessly non-ideological, and absolutely dispassionate. My one, legal vote for Romney will require two votes for Obama from the dead, and/or cartoon characters, and/or union thugs, and/or incarcerated felons, and/or illegal aliens, to put him back in the lead.

One vote is all I have, and I’ll be damned (with apologies to my friends who think I will be jeopardizing my soul) if I’ll give Obama even the slightest advantage by wasting it.

Small but mighty -- tugboats maneuver the carrier USS John F. Kennedy into its mooring place. (Wikipedia)

Patient and constant pressure – that’s how little tugboats move big ships where they are supposed to go. That is what conservatives will have to do with the new (God willing!) president.

This is directed at you Republicans who say you will stand behind your non-Romney candidate for the nomination, no matter what, all the way to Election Day.

I feel your pain. I wrote in Alan Keyes in the general election in 2008, and have discussed extensively why I did that. Hand-picked loser John McCain was just too repugnant a weasel to vote for. I still believe the GOP establishment picked him as the best candidate to hand the election to Barack Obama. Why? Because losing was less scary for them than winning and having to admit to the unpleasant state in which George II left us, and then (shudder) deal with it.

The flaw in my analysis of that election was that I swallowed the popular assumption that electing the “right” president would reverse the century of Progressive erosion that has nearly washed away our fundamental freedoms.

That erosion paved the way for Trojan Horse Marxist Barack Obama, the single most destructive president in history, who then did more damage to our Constitutional Republic than any president since Wilson, and is on a trajectory to become a virtual – or actual – dictator in a second term.

With A Democrat majority in the House and Senate until the Great Rebound of 2010, Obama rammed through legislation, and appointed “Czars” that threaten to turn the Constitution into a meaningless rag. Obamacare, with its thousands of pages of abuses and illegalities; “recess appointments” without recesses; Supreme Court nominees without any qualifications other than allegiance to his socialist world view; “Fast and Furious,” and other, grotesque miscarriages of justice by his sock-puppet Attorney General, apologies to despots not entitled to apologies… the list is long.

If he gets a second term, Obama and his crew of leftist hacks and clowns will accomplish their mission, turning the best country in the history of the world into a third-rate banana republic, without the capacity to grow a single banana.

After the airway, breathing and circulation are restored, there will still be not just years, but decades of work to do, rooting out the regulators and executive branch hacks and parasites who have embedded themselves in the bloated bulk of our federal government, feeding on their host while contributing, each of them, to its destruction.

That is why I will vote for the Republican nominee in November, no matter who he (OR SHE!) is.

Our new (God willing!) president, prodded by the conservative tugboats in Congress and the tens of millions of Tea Party conservatives and Constitutionalists in the electorate, will have to apply patient and constant pressure to the right, forcing the government back into the role prescribed for it in our founding documents.

No single man or woman, no single president, can reverse the century of socialization advanced by Democrats and Liberal Republicans.

The angry and awakened conservative electorate simply cannot go back to sleep — even if the Republicans win big in November.

We have to take some of the time that we used to use to work, play and take care of our families, and put it into relentless, constant pressure on all three branches of government to get out of our faces, out of our pockets, out of our families, out of our businesses, and back into the constraints of the Constitution.

We can force a Republican Senate to approve competent and ethical appointments to cabinet departments and to the federal courts, and to soundly reject stupid, negligent or simply corrupt nominees, regardless of presidential or GOP hack pressure.

We can steer a Republican House to reject any act that doesn’t contract our debt, and to defund agencies that don’t have any Constitutional basis for their existence, while we wait for a chastened executive branch to abolish those agencies and departments. We can also compel our Representatives to initiate impeachment of unfit judges, and build fires under cabinet officials who have lost sight of their Constitutional limitations and responsibilities.

We can’t do any of the above without research, emails, calls, visits, campaign contributions and constant vigilance applied by millions of diligent, persistent voters.

We can push a rudderless America away from the emotional appeals of the progressives and liberal lobbies, and back toward

Like tugs moving a giant ship, or like a Cumberland River towboat pushing thousands of tons of gravel or grain downriver, we can steer the Republican “leadership” in the right direction – or replace them in the next elections.

Barge tug pushes thousands of tons of cargo on the Cumberland River near Ashland City, TN (Photo by the author)

Let’s just say I know enough about smoking marijuana (having been college-aged in the late 60’s) to know how apt is the term “wasted” in that context… but let’s also say that I could have passed a random, pop drug test any time over the last forty years, and I could do so at right this moment.

While I am not chomping at the bit for the legal right to hit the pot store on the way home from WalMart, it is hard NOT to see the cost of the “war on drugs” on our Constitutional rights. And, no, you don’t have to be a Paulistinian, or even a classical Libertarian to see it.

“]”]”

Would you trust your rights to "Good" Attorneys General -- Ashcroft (L) and Thornburgh (R)

”]”]”]”]If we give government the power to knock down doors without first serving a warrant, and to seize private property without due process or even criminal charges (among a host of abuses justified by the “War on Drugs,” not to mention the “War on Terror”), we are giving that power not just to a John Ashcroft or a Dick Thornburgh; we’re giving it to a Janet Reno and an Eric Holder. That’s not just stupid; it’s reckless and destructive.

What have we given up from the Bill of Rights, just to ignore the inherent evil of no-knock warrants and civil asset forfeiture? If a government acting in our best interests can abuse these procedures, what can a government that holds us in contempt do with them?

Legalizing marijuana would break away the current markets for marijuana from their very close relationship with the markets for heroin, cocaine, meth, hot guns, stolen property, prostitution, human and drug smuggling, terrorism, etc., draining tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from that income stream, and diverting it into taxable income streams. It would also unclog thousands of slots on pending court case calendars and empty prison and jail cells of people who otherwise wouldn’t be there, making room for the people who really should be locked up.

The statists graciously accept all our offers to surrender our rights for alleged safety or other benefits, regardless of the “war” allegedly being fought — drugs, poverty, terrorism, income inequality…

They know from history that such rights, once surrendered, are seldom restored, except by force and the spilling of lots of blood. At some point, it will be too late to get them back without that terrible cost.

The Kinman Bar, courtesy of Wikipedia. What Leftist "Journalists" picture when they think about letting concealed carry permit holders carry into places that serve alcohol.

As Old Lodge Skins said in the classic movie, Little Big Man, “Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

Remember those blood-soaked gunfights in places that sell alcohol, when Tennessee allowed us permit holders to carry concealed into them? You don’t? Perhaps that’s because they didn’t happen.

When Tennessee legislated to allow concealed carry holders to carry into places that sell alcohol, The Tennessean promised us that there would be a bloodbath because of voodoo. Yes, voodoo. The presence of two, inanimate objects in the same space — alcohol and firearms — was magically supposed to trigger carnage and wholesale death.

While Tennessean “journalists” may think alcohol is OK, we know that 99% of them find firearms to be inherently evil. Since we also know that these same “journalists” believe in magic, we are not surprised that they imbue inanimate objects with magical power.

We heard plenty about the “pouring gasoline on a fire” outcome that was clearly ahead, when we allowed law-abiding gun owners to carry their evil objects into public places. So, where are the stacks of reports of gun violence since the law passed?

Well, of course, not being dependent on magical thinking allowed the rest of us to understand that the predicted mass killing by firearm was no more likely before the law went into effect than after. As has already happened in dozens of other states, nothing new happened.

2) Cut, Cap and Balance failed to get a vote in the Senate, so the House has to pass something the Senate will like.

3) Republicans will be blamed for default, for Social Security checks and VA benefit checks not being issued, and for the downgrade of US credit, among other things, if Boehner’s latest mutation doesn’t get out of the House.

Is this supposed to be an argument worthy of mega-brains like Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol? Guilt by association?

The small-government right opposes Boehner because it is a capitulation. It grants Obama nearly a trillion dollars of immediate spending authorization, and razor-thin, ephemeral spending cuts.

The big government left opposes Boehner because they have been told to, by their ideological leaders, and because even phantom spending reductions threaten their eternal right to buy votes with taxpayers’ money, and they will fight like rabid raccoons against anyone or anything that threatens that practice.
The pathetic spending cuts, history has shown anyone who cares, won’t happen, because current Congresses can’t obligate future Congresses. And, even if they could, so what? When have laws or obligations stopped big government from doing what it wants? When the people driving the policy think the Constitution is “flawed,” because it is a document of “negative liberties,” what’s to stop them? If Congress won’t allow it, find a judge who will. What will the RINOs do? “Well, it’s settled law,” they will say, and go back to their perpetual election campaigns.

2) The Senate didn’t “like” CC&P, so the House has to pass something Reid & Co. will “friend.”

As the establishment Republican critics often say, CC&B didn’t even get a vote in the Senate. To that I say, so what? The Senate is controlled by Democrats, and collaborating RINOs. Is anyone really surprised that CC&B didn’t get a vote?

Do the establishment Republicans above somehow think Boehner 3.x could get through the Senate as anything but a shell, gutted and carved up like a Halloween pumpkin, and filled with progressive and socialist candy? And that is only if demented clown Reid lets it get that far.

And then, what? The Boehner pumpkin zombie bill goes back to the House. House members with 0.5 brain or more vote it down, and the Media/White House axis brand the House Republicans as obstructionists. Is there ANYTHING about this outcome that is not utterly predictable?

3) Republicans will be blamed for financial ruin, the starvation of the elderly and babies, the deaths of polar bears, and the cake falling, if they don’t get behind Boehner 3.x.

Republicans, as the Elephantine Establishmentarians never tire of lecturing us, only have one-half of one branch of the legislature, which is one-third of the government. Yes, I read that somewhere. And, by the way, that’s wrong. Republicans do NOT have one-half of the House.

They have a clear majority, if they ever decide to vote together, which is considerably more than 1/2 of 1/2 of 1/3. If the leadership had principle in mind, rather than obscure gamesmanship and obsolete reelection strategies, they would use that majority to pass legislation that is clearly right for the country, and not what “might” pass the Democrat Senate.

They should get the message out that they are doing what the Constitution not only allows, but compels them to do. And they should let the chips fall where they may. Those who are unable, or unwilling to do that, should be encouraged to find jobs in lobby shops and universities, where they will be in more forgiving, less demanding environments.

Where are the leaders?

Where are the leaders – the people who can and will lead the United States of America out of the open grave we have been thrown into by the “leaders” of the last fifty years?

Where are the passionate, honest and humble men and women who know that government running every aspect of our lives is a recipe for misery and slavery?

Where are the men and women who will place themselves under the media spotlight without a crippling need for acceptance, because they understand that the media do not share, and will never share, their values?

Where are the men and women who will laugh in the faces of liberal hacks and counterfeit intellectuals with their cries of “racist” and other cheap, cowardly epithets, and call them out as the frauds and liars they are?

What follows is the speech I want to hear from a candidate who believes himself to be one of the real leaders – one who will help us to climb out of that open grave, rather than throwing in smaller shovelfuls of dirt, and telling us everything will be fine, if we just relax and embrace the darkness.

My fellow citizens:

I want to save this country. I can save this country. I need to save this country.

We are sinking into serfdom. Our government has broken the bonds the Founders wisely put on in our Constitution, and it is becoming our master, rather than our servant.

In the unending effort to buy permanent power, our government has plunged us into debt and inserted itself into every aspect of our lives.

While it pursues permanent power, our government neglects its most urgent and legitimate responsibilities. It fails at protecting the weak against the strong, and at protecting our nation against foreign and domestic enemies. It fails at protecting our rights and property against unlawful seizure and against unlawful restrictions on what we may do in and with our own property.

In fact, government has aggressively pursued the destruction of our right to own property, and to do with that property what we wish, thus rendering the right to own property nearly meaningless.

I must tell you, my fellow Americans, that once government has rendered meaningless the right to own property, we all become the property of government. The most important difference between a slave and a free person is the right to own property and to do with it, while protecting the rights of one’s neighbors, as one wishes.

I will reverse this endless expansion of government power.

I will nominate judges to the federal bench and to the supreme court, who will treat their oaths to uphold the Constitution literally. I will ask Congress to impeach judges who violate this oath.

I will pare down drastically the bloated regulatory bureaucracy that is choking off our freedom and our ability to prosper.

On my first day in office, I will fire “czars” that are unaccountable to the people and who are openly hostile to freedom, and who have no basis for authority in the Constitution.

I will ask Congress to abolish entire executive branch agencies and departments that have no basis in the Constitution, and no goal but their own self-perpetuation and expansion of influence.

The unborn, the sick and the elderly – the weakest and most innocent among us — are fortunate, these days, if we allow them to live. The fortunate survivors are those who were not killed because they were inconvenient, embarrassing, expensive, or evidence of a crime.

Our government has, instead, made these innocents legitimate prey for the predators who will make themselves rich and advance their lethal, utopian ideals by killing them.

I will sign legislation that makes abortion and euthanasia illegal under federal law, and I will speak unflinchingly to the States, from the bully pulpit that is the presidency, urging them to do the same. I will ask Congress to send me a bill that removes taxpayer dollars from any program, foreign or domestic, that funds abortion or euthanasia. I will sign that bill into law immediately, before American taxpayers can be forced to pay for one more innocent’s death.

A citizen’s life is a citizen’s property, and the right to own that property is basic, without which no other right matters. The right to life subsumes the right to choose one’s own medical care, and to pay for it as one wishes. The current level of government interference in this right is intolerable, and illegal.

I will revoke any executive orders intended to advance Obamacare, and I will consider the federal court ruling that Obamacare is unconstitutional as binding. I will immediately revoke the authority of any executive branch agency, board or other bureaucratic structure put in place by preceding administrations to support or enforce this law.

I will instruct Congress to send me legislation repealing Obamacare completely, and I will then ask Congress to begin structuring legislation that will unleash the private sector to revolutionize health care while dramatically reducing costs and increasing the range of options available to consumers.

I would expect this legislation to include a gradual transition over several years from government-funded — and government-restricted – health care for the aged and for those who are incapable for providing for themselves. Medicare must be replaced incrementally with private medical care that patients who are capable of it can pay for themselves, as medical care was dispensed for hundreds of years before this bloated, self-destructive program came into existence. The indigent and disabled must be protected, and they will be. Those who can pay all or a share of their health care costs, though, should do so.

Contrary to the lies you are being told by the Left, this does not mean my administration would throw the sick, the elderly or the indigent out in the street to die uncared for. That is a lie, and the liars know it. What the liars are not telling you, is that Medicare and Social Security are both utopian schemes that bought a lot of votes in their day, but their day is over. We simply can’t pay for them any longer.

Let me say that again: Medicare and Social Security are both about to run out of money. If we shut our eyes to this stubborn fact, Medicare and Social Security will still be out of money very soon, and our nation’s sorry financial state will soon prevent us from borrowing any more from Communist China to keep them afloat.

Tell me, my fellow Americans, what will happen to the sick when our government-driven health care system no longer has money to care for them? Rationing. It is happening now, in every country that foolishly believed it could nationalize its health care and not face the same, inevitable consequences.

Care is being withheld, and patients are being allowed to die from neglect and by the withdrawal of basic life support. They are starving and dying of thirst in their unchanged, soiled beds. If their families do not bring them food and change their linens, they lie in their own wastes and die, slowly and in great discomfort. This is the fate of those the Left is supposedly defending against their allegedly greedy, heartless critics.

Those who are so often vocal in their expressions of compassion and concern for the sick, are the liars who cannot face the consequences of their own lies. The helpless victims, however, face those consequences daily. This is what happens when government takes away the property right of citizens to care for their own lives. They become slaves.

What government gives, government can take away – including life, itself.

This nation has a history of decades of government encroachment into our lives, decades of spending money we do not have, decades of gradually surrendering our sovereignty to creditors and to those who think we should not have borders, decades of growing generations of government dependents, decades of failing to educate our citizens in basic skills, history and analytical thinking.

We cannot reverse this disastrous course overnight. But, we must begin immediately, shouldering the burden and working against the pain that will result, because if we do not change course, we will die as a nation, just as surely as the sick will die under national health care.

We must change course. And we will.

I want to save this country. I can save this country. I need to save this country.

But, I cannot do it alone. I must have your help and support. Now, and after the election, I must have your support and your trust. With your help, and with the Lord’s guidance, we will save this country. We must save this country. We owe it to ourselves and to our posterity.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your attention. Now, let’s get to work.

To my Republican friends: take back your party. So that it doesn’t matter so much who wins the election, because we have shared values about the education of our children, the growth of our economy, how we defend our country, our security and civil liberties, how we respect our seniors. Because there are so many things at risk right now — perhaps in another question I’ll go into them, if you want. But the fact is that elections shouldn’t matter as much as they do…But when it comes to a place where there doesn’t seem to be shared values then that can be problematic for the country, as I think you can see right now.

— Nancy Pelosi, deposed Speaker of the House, in a speech at Tufts University, week of April 10, 2011

Nancy’s successor to the Speaker’s chair probably agrees with her on that statement.

John Boehner is probably thinking, “Yes, if it hadn’t been for those pesky Tea Party rubes and hicks, we’d be playing musical chairs up here in the Capitol, every few years, looking busy, but not accomplishing much of anything. We’d go on collecting our paychecks and benefits. All the while, we’d be shuffling toward that luxuriant retirement we have legislated for ourselves. In the meantime — on both sides of the aisle, as they say around here – we’d be basking in the glory and perks that come with our offices.

“We’d make the occasional visit back to the district, like those visits the folks dragged us along for when we were kids, to Old Aunt Whatsername’s house out in the boondocks, when we were supposed to act nice and not break anything.

“We go to town meetings and pretend to care about the constituents as they blather on about the ‘Constitution,’ and ‘fiscal responsibility,’ and ‘Get us out of the UN,’ and all that other stuff. All the time, though, we’re daydreaming about a visit to the House gym, or the cafeteria, or the posh dinners with lobbyists, or the photo ops with celebrities and foreign dignitaries, or the ‘fact-finding missions’ to resort towns, and thinking, ‘I can’t believe they’re PAYING me for this crap. What a country! Nancy’s right. This was such a great gig, before the damn Tea Party came along and screwed things up.’”

The only startling things about the quote from Madame Pelosi at the top of this post are (1) that it is true; and (2) that it was made public — if only because somebody in her audience recorded it and published it. Yes, the 2010 election does seem to have mattered, although perhaps not as much as some of us wish.

The “shared values” of the careerists in Washington, both donkeys and elephants, are threatened, but not by the yawning chasm of national insolvency.

No, that’s no big deal.

The real threat, Nancy and the Tan Man agree, is the Tea Party. The DC-rooted hacks in Congress, of both parties, still want to run things according to the old status quo.

They may not stop trying until they are handed pink slips.

Until then, they need to get hammered unmercifully by those rubes and hicks in their districts, or they will continue to do as the Stupid Party is wont to do, over the last forty years — snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Catch some more RINOs in the primary election filter, and beat some donkeys in their own, fouled nests. Cause a glut of applicants for K-Street lobbyist jobs, university “lecturer-drone” chairs and appointments to third-tier ambassadorships.